


heart, could we bear the marvel of this thing?

by seventhstar



Series: e.e. cummings series [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Crying, Domestic Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mr. Squishy, Ryoga Freaking Out, True Love, tupperware
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-12 08:19:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3349820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>post-show sharkbait hurt/comfort, featuring a stuffed octopus, a marriage proposal, too many tupperware, and true love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	heart, could we bear the marvel of this thing?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rangerhitomi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rangerhitomi/gifts).



“Dammit,” Ryoga says. He’s out of tupperware and of pots, which has never happened before, because Ryoga has the most impressive collection of tupperware of anyone he knows. Yuuma used to complain that Ryoga was addicted, but then Ryoga started filling the tupperware with leftovers Yuuma could eat for lunch, and soon enough Yuuma was helping him pick new ones out whenever there was a sale at the home goods store.

Every surface in the kitchen is covered with food — soups, cakes, a pizza, noodles, steamed vegetables, three different salads, Yuuma’s favorite kind of Duel Lunch and every variation of Duel Lunch Ryoga could concoct, fried octopus, chocolate dipped everything, and still more — and Ryoga is unsatisfied. None of it is bad. It’s all perfectly fine, and _that’s_ the problem: there’s nothing spectacular or amazing or jaw-droppingly good. Ryoga has made every single thing he can think of, things that he knows Yuuma loves, and things Yuuma has never eaten but probably would love, and in desperation whatever Ryoga could google and make out of what he had at hand.

He knows how Yuuma will respond to any one of these meals: he’ll say he loves it, and probably that he loves Ryoga, too, for making it for him. And that would be fine on a normal day, but today is supposed to be special. Ryoga rubs the velvet box in his pocket again. It feels like an anchor, dragging him down. The problem is that Yuuma loves everything, and loves food, and since Ryoga cooks for him as much as possible, the novelty has worn off and Yuuma responds with the same level of enthusiasm every time.

It seemed like a good plan. Make dinner, woo Yuuma with a delicious meal and Ryoga’ best behavior, and then after dessert get down on one knee (or both knees and beg) and propose. People do it all the time, don’t they? Ryoga looked up the statistics while he was trying to figure out the best way, the way that would lead to a ‘yes’, and was boggled by the number of marriages performed every year. _How hard could it be_ , he thought.

It is _hard._ Ryoga looks around the kitchen, which is a mess, and at the time. Yuuma will be home soon, and he’s going to realize as soon as he comes through the door that he’s dating someone who can’t even handle making dinner like a normal person. Maybe Yuuma will look in the mirror and realize that he’s really cute and too kind and can probably replace Ryoga in a second — no. Ryoga shakes his head, determined not to get caught in his own insecurity that way.

He can’t think of anything else — what’s the point in doing all this? Yuuma has everything he needs, doesn’t he, people love him and he’s grown into a great duelist and because he forgives and forgets, because he never gives up, fate has been kind to him. Why does he even need Ryoga? What can Ryoga even provide for Yuuma that Yuuma can’t get from someone else, someone without all the baggage, someone who isn’t standing in their kitchen in a pink apron that was a gag gift and freaking out over _fucking dinner_ —

Ryoga turns off the stove and sinks to the floor. His back against the oven, he closes his eyes. Maybe he won’t ask at all. Maybe he and Yuuma shouldn’t get married, if Ryoga is the kind of boyfriend who spends two months trying to figure out how to propose and instead uses up all the food in the apartment and then sits on the kitchen floor and whines about how it’s a metaphor, isn’t it, for the future of their entire relationship —

The front doors opens. “I’m back!”

Ryoga starts crying. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing at first, and then he feels the tears roll down his face and hates himself. He’s being ridiculous. He only needs to hold it together for a few more minutes, so he can say hello to Yuuma and clean up and then —

— but no. Ryoga’s already cracked, and there’s nothing to do but sit there, and cry, and wallow in his abject, entirely self-inflicted misery.

“Hey, are we having a party — Shark!”

There’s a thump that must be Yuuma dropping his bags as he runs across the living room and falls to his knees onto the linoleum. Ryoga sniffs pathetically as Yuuma hugs him, and wipes at Ryoga’s face with the sleeve of his jacket. Then Yuuma slips the jacket off and throws it over Ryoga, like warming him up will make him stop crying.

He _should_ stop crying. But the tears keep falling, and all Ryoga can think is that if he tells Yuuma the truth, Yuuma will either look at him like he’s losing his mind, or worse yet, laugh. Yuuma leans into him and asks if he’s okay ( _I’m sitting on the kitchen floor crying, do I look okay to you?_ ) or if he’s hurt and he touches Ryoga so tentatively, like he’s checking for a wound.

“Come on, Shark, say something,” Yuuma begs.

“…I’m fine.”

“Liar.”

“Seriously, I’m fine.” Ryoga tries to sound irritated but his voice breaks. Yuuma falls all over him them, clinging to him like a limpet and saying _Shark, baby, tell me already,_ in that voice he uses in the dead of night: the voice he uses when Ryoga wakes hunched over in bed, eyes blank, gasping, a thousand years and a thousand miles away. It’s the voice he uses when he calls Ryoga back, the voice that anchors him down with guilt and love and familiarity — the voice that says he is safe and he is home and Yuuma will call him by any name he wants to hear.

And Ryoga is struck again at the mercy of the universe, that Yuuma Tsukumo could fall in love with him — with Nasch, alien and terrible, the blood of all Yuuma’s loved ones on his hands, Nasch who had decided that their friendship was something to be sacrificed (and Ryoga doesn’t regret those things but the memory of Yuuma’s expression when they stood there for the first time on opposite sides, that hurt) —and with the broken mess that was Ryoga Kamishiro. Yuuma never complains, not when Ryoga wakes up in the middle of the night confused and paranoid and gasping, caught in the nightmares of a war that was over, or when Ryoga demonstrates that he is a socially inept loser who is incapable of not being an asshole, or when Ryoga complains about him, because Yuuma is imperfect: impulsive and messy and whiny and forgetful and dense.

And when Ryoga looks into Yuuma’s eyes, he forgets that he is a star, burning alone and apart in the cold; instead he becomes a planet, caught in the gravitational pull of Yuuma’s love, always falling towards him (always falling for him), never landing.

“Do you need Mr. Squishy?”

Ryoga blinks at him. “Excuse me?”

“I gave him to you for our anniversary!”

“You gave him to me three weeks after our anniversa _— you named him Mr. Squishy?_ ”

‘Mr. Squishy’ ( _oh god, that is undignified_ ) is the purple stuffed octopus Yuuma brought him last year. Ryoga sometimes cuddles him when Yuuma isn’t there, or least he thought it was only when Yuuma isn’t there. Ryoga privately calls him ‘Sharktopus’.

“It’s cute.” Yuuma says. “Shark. Was it a Nasch thing?”

Ryoga shakes his head. It’s time to change the subject while he’s still got some dignity. “Do you want to order out tonight?”

“Order out? After you made all this food?”

“I make food every day. Don’t you…don’t you get sick of it?”

Ryoga doesn’t know what he wants, whether he wants Yuuma to say yes, so he can plan a night out for proposal, version two point oh, or Yuuma to say no, he loves it when Ryoga cooks, Ryoga is fine, he hasn’t been pretending otherwise because Ryoga’s heart is sometimes fragile, paper-thin, crumpled with the softest of touches.

“Nah, I like it when you cook. Reminds me of my mom and dad.” Yuuma says it so casually that Ryoga could miss the depth of the compliment, if he didn’t know Yuuma so well. “Only with less food poisoning.”

“Yeah, well,” Ryoga gestures at the mess all around him. “Did your parents ever cry on the floor like losers?”

“You’re not a loser for crying.”

“You don’t even know why I was crying —”

He lapses back into defensiveness before he can think it through. It’s safer behind his walls, retreating, so that Yuuma has to follow him in; after all, if Yuuma ever doesn’t come, he’ll be safe in his loneliness. It’s massively unfair to even think that, with Yuuma wrapped around him right now, and that makes Ryoga angry, and when he’s angry he always, always fucks up.

“That’s because you won’t tell me —”

“Well, it’s not like I can propose now!”

“What?”

“…I…I mean…fuck.” Ryoga fumbles out the velvet box from his pocket and tosses it into Yuuma’s lap. Maybe if he does it irrelevantly, Yuuma won’t know he’s shaking inside. He wait with bated breath as Yuuma pulls away, and leans back against the oven, and opens the box.

The band is steel, unmarked on the outside. Ryoga left it plain, no designs, no jewels, no shine to draw the eye to it, only the engraving on the inside where it would sit against Yuuma’s skin. Selfishly, he wants it to fade into the leather of Yuuma’s gloves, the metal of his vest buckles, so that only the two of them will ever look at it and immediately think of their love.

Yuuma picks up the ring and holds it up to the light.

“For me?”

Ryoga nods.

He peers inside it; his lips move as he reads the engraving — you give me hope, Ryoga reads in the shape of his mouth — and then reads it again, again, again. Then he puts the ring back into Ryoga’s hands, and for a moment Ryoga thinks he’s fucked up (again) but no, Yuuma is smiling even as he wipes at his eyes with his sleeve.

“Here,” Yuuma says. He holds out his hand expectantly, and Ryoga slides the ring slowly up his finger. It fits perfectly, and neither of them can stop looking at it; or maybe it’s just Ryoga who can’t stop, because Yuuma grabs the front of his shirt with the other hand and pulls him for a kiss.

Half-drunk on the taste of Yuuma’s mouth, it takes Ryoga too long to make himself pull away, fold his fingers into the lapels of Yuuma’s vest, ask: “Well?”

“Let’s get married,” Yuuma whispers, eyes sparkling, and then he kisses Ryoga again, and when he cups Ryoga’s face, he can feel the ring against his face, cold where Yuuma’s fingers are normally warm.

The food is going cold all around them (but that can wait), and maybe tomorrow Yuuma will change his mind (but that is tomorrow) and Ryoga’s heart is still pounding, fight-or-flight, like the world is ending (but before he’d have run, and maybe when tomorrow comes and Yuuma stays, he’ll believe a little more).

“Is all this food my wedding present?” Yuuma asks, because of course he does. “Shark, you’re the best —”

Maybe if he just loves Yuuma with everything he has, he will close his eyes and not see darkness. He can be pieced back together, Ryoga lets himself hope, if only he can bear it, the warmth of Yuuma’s touch, the vast depth of Yuuma’s love.

“Stay with me,” he says. Nothing to do, he thinks, but hang on.

+++++

(”Excuse me,” Yuuma says to the woman behind the counter. She looks up at him and smiles. “Can I get this engraved?”

The saleswomen picks up the steel band he’s laid on the glass counter-top and studies it. She nods. “What would you like it to say?”

Yuuma slides a sheet of paper, creased from where it was folded clumsily and jammed into his pocket, towards her. There, in his crooked scrawl, are five words.

“You give me a future,” she read aloud, and Yuuma nods, and looks up past her through the skylight, at the slice of blue, at the sky which never ends. He wonders if Ryoga will read this inscription later, through his tears, if the words will warm him.)


End file.
